Tag: fencing

Before we got pigs, we just had a bowl of food out for the dogs free choice. Those days were so innocent, so pure, so carefree. Then came the pigs. <cue ominous music>

Now, I’ve had all kinds of livestock for most of my life, but nothing prepared me for life with pigs. They are an entirely different animal altogether. I remember the first time we were moving two of our little sweet adorable piglets out of one pen and into another. Everything was going great, they were following a bucket of grain and we were thrilled with our success. Then they quit coming. I looked back to see those two sweet little angels ravenously devouring a whole chicken we’d fed the dogs, bones crunching in their mouths as they contentedly snorted and chewed. Whoa. Continue reading “Creating a Feeding Station for Livestock Guardian Dogs”→

My heart jolted out of my body for probably the 4,000th time in a month to the sound of a honking horn. In the weeks since moving to our new farm, situated right next to a paved road, it had seemed like one catastrophe after another and the honking horn was a sure clue that yet another disaster was unfolding right outside.

Blaze, our benevolent Great Pyrenees, had once again escaped the pasture where she lived and was out on the road stopping cars. This is a 50 MPH road, so you can imagine the chaos that ensued. She would refuse to move, barking at these evident trespassers and nothing we could do short of dragging her back off the road would make her stop. This was happening at the same time as the neighbor issue and I was over capacity for dog related stress. Continue reading “Fencing for the Livestock Guardian Dog”→

Pallets are hands-down one of the most versatile and important no-cost homesteader supplies. Even if you don’t think you’ll ever use them, if you happen upon a stash of them at a store for free, you owe it to all of your soon-to-be jealous fellow homesteaders across the world to bring those pallets home. From instant patches in existing fences to building entire lines with only pallets and elbow grease, pallets make the easiest and quickest fence to put up.

My husband lived and worked out of state for a year and a half while I had three (now four) small children and a small farm to take care of alone. I remember how much I appreciated being able to use pallets then. I could put up a single line by myself while the baby napped. (I originally wrote about our pallet fence back in 2012 on my old blog, but in an effort to consolidate info and remove myself from Google’s clutches, I am rewriting those articles here and ditching the Blogger blog.) Continue reading “Building a Zero Cost, Post-Free Pallet Fence”→